As always, we're fond of daily-drinker PN. It gets hard to justify cracking a $30+ PN on a weeknight if only one of us is drinking. So, we recently revisited Stephen Vincent, one we've enjoyed in the past. The 2006 ran us $14, and if you can find one at that price point, it's a steal. Very light, translucent ruby in color, with great red fruit aromas and flavors. Light and snappy and a very nice example of a feminine style of PN. We'll enjoy it all summer long. Very nice stuff. Alc. 13.6%.

As for other recent QPR PN, we've also had good luck with the latest vintage ('07) of Queen of Hearts by Daniel Gehrs (it runs around $12 these days, and I'd put my money on it year-in-and-year-out as the best QPR PN out there), A by Acacia (closer to $17), and we had a very nice closeout PN by the RRV outfit Hook & Ladder. It was an '06 and worth every penny of the $22 we paid.

A few more to update this thread. First of all, we've had bad luck with Chilean PN in the past. However, the '06 Morande is very tasty and varietally-correct, and at around $10 is an absolute steal. Anne mistakenly thought she had cracked a nicer PN, and was startled to find that it was so inexpensive. We'll be buying more of it this summer.

Watching "Sense and Sensibility" on DVD, I popped Dashwood (Get it? Dashwood? Am I the only Jane Austen geek around here?) 2006 PN from Marlborough (NZ) which was on closeout at $18. Grapey, strawberry aromas and flavors, with a bit of barnyard-y funkiness thrown in. Not too bad.

Better from NZ was Spy Valley's '05 PN, also a closeout wine, but at closer to $20. Very dark garnet in color, and both creamy and acidic in the mouth, with plumb and berries, a bit of cola, and minerality. Nice, long finish. It got a WE88 and a WS87, for those that care about that sort of thing.